


The Captain Dances

by companionenvy



Category: Doctor Who (2005), Torchwood
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-03
Updated: 2013-05-03
Packaged: 2017-12-10 07:18:35
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,594
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/783325
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/companionenvy/pseuds/companionenvy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After The End of Time, the Doctor sends post- Children of Earth Jack back to 1940s London - and to Nancy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Captain Dances

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on Teaspoon.
> 
> Doctor Who belongs to the BBC. A few lines of dialogue are taken from or paraphrase lines from the episode The Doctor Dances.

So Alonso had been the distraction. Which, Jack thinks, makes marginally more sense than the Doctor turning up, here and now, to play matchmaker. Not that the gesture isn’t appreciated, especially given the Doctor’s previous policy of coping with Jack’s existence by ignoring it for well over a hundred years of the latter’s personal timeline. Plus, the sex was great, although Jack, admittedly, hasn’t had much to compare it to for longer than he cares to recall.

Still, if the Doctor has bothered to track Jack down, here and now and with a sexy young sailor on offer, that means he knows about the 456, and that means that he knows Jack needs a hell of a lot more than a good fuck. Which is why Jack isn’t all that surprised when, not an hour after Alonso has gone back to his ship, his vortex manipulator begins to beep with pre-programmed coordinates. Pre-programmed coordinates that are not currently registering on his display screen.

Jack could probably have figured out how to check the coordinates, and he could certainly have ignored the beeping. Probably, he should have: a lot of time had passed since Satellite Five, and Jack did doubt the Doctor. For all he knew, the Doctor was planning on dropping him on Gwen’s doorstep, or worse, Alice’s. Yet, when he raises his hand to override the Doctor’s instructions, something holds him back. " _Bigger on the inside,_ " says an improbably Northern-accented voice in Jack’s head. 

“You’d better be,” says Jack, aloud, and presses the button.

\--------  
The good news is that it isn’t Cardiff.

The bad news is that it is Earth. London, and in the 1930s, if Jack had to guess. Meaning, of course, that Jack could very well run into any number of people who know him, not to mention at least one other version of himself.

He just hadn’t expected it to happen so quickly.

“I know you,” says a voice, and Jack spins around.

The speaker is a young woman, maybe even a teenager, although Jack knows far better than to make assumptions. Her brown hair is arranged in tight plaits, but the probing look she sends him is not a child’s inquiry, but a woman’s steel. She does, indeed, look vaguely familiar, and he struggles to place her — she doesn’t look like Torchwood, and she probably wouldn’t be using such a neutral tone if they’d had sex before — when she says “You were with the Doctor. The night that Jamie….”

She breaks off, but Jack doesn’t need her to say more. The woman - Nancy, his memory supplies — who had been trying to get past the guards. The mother. Jack hadn’t seen it, but he had listened from his ship. It all comes back, the desperate hope that the Doctor would find a way, would find some way so that Earth wouldn’t have to pay for Jack’s mistake, so that Jack wouldn’t have to live with leaving Rose to die. The Doctor’s compassion for the young woman’s secret, his joy when the impossible happened, Jack’s own realization of what he needed to do.

“Is he here?” Nancy asks.

“No,” says Jack. “To be honest, I’m not sure why I am.”

“Well make yourself useful then,” says Nancy briskly. “It’s not easy, you know, feeding half the orphans in London.”

Jack looks at her. It was, he noted, the middle of the night, and she was out here without her son, carrying a large burlap sack and, if he wasn’t mistaken, a crude, half-concealed lockpick.

“No,” he says. “But it can be fun.”

\---------  
Nancy, of course, was not stealing for the thrill of it. It was September of 1941, and the blitz had been over for several months. This was good news for London, but bad news for thieves — especially thieves who regarded the welfare of street urchins as their personal responsibility. Since the constant air raids had abated, Nancy had had to become more creative in her methods, and while she had adapted well, Jack, with his background in cons and his fifty-first century tech, had a lot he could teach her. That night’s haul was at least twice as large as her previous record, and, though she wouldn’t have admitted it, it had been fun. She doesn’t know if she can trust this handsome Captain, but she thinks she might need him.

“We’d best get home,” she says after they deposit the food at her hidden storage site. Jack had sealed the bags extra-tight with that thing on his wrist, which he told her would prevent the excess they had collected from spoiling before the kids could get to it.

“I can manage on my own,” says Jack, his tone shifting suddenly. While they had worked, he had vacillated between clipped professionalism and flirtatious banter. Now, he sounds cold. Empty.

She waits until he’s looking at her again. “So can I. But there’s kids out there who’ll get a proper meal tomorrow because you were with me. Besides, you’ve got ways of avoiding the coppers that I don’t. Almost been caught twice already.”

She isn’t sure, at first, whether or not it has worked. Jack fiddles with the strap on his arm, like he is preparing to disappear the way he had done the other time. Then, he grins. “When you put it like that,” he says, “it sounds like a challenge,” and takes her hand in his. _Psychology_ , Nancy thinks, and smiles.

\--------  
Jack’s still not sure why the Doctor has sent him here, but he doesn’t think he minds. There’s pretty low disaster potential in helping Nancy for a little while, and she’s right in thinking he can make her job easier. Working by herself, it’s just a matter of time before the police catch up to her; with Jack, the authorities don’t stand a chance, as this kind of job is way too small-time to ping Torchwood’s radar and they’re the only ones with even a slim hope of getting around his tech. Not that they’d have much luck, given that Jack’s the one who taught them most of the little they know. 

Jack feels an ache when he thinks of all the people he’s known who are alive right now, all the people he could, theoretically, go and see. In another life, he’s just left Estelle; in this one, he could go back to her. But even without the potential for paradox, he knows he won’t do it. As long as he stay s with Nancy, he’s safe: she’s made it pretty clear that what she’s proposing is a partnership, not an affair. Her background with Jamie’s father will have made her suspicious anyway, and she heard enough that night to know better than to trust him. After a little while, he can teach her enough that she’ll be safe on her own, especially if he can leave her with the right tools, hardly an impossibility given that he still remembers his old Torchwood access codes. It’s not as if, he thinks wryly, he can’t spare a few months. 

As they walk, Nancy fills him in on her life. It seems that a friend — a Doctor Constantine — is letting her rent his grandson’s old flat, which he hadn’t had the heart to part with when the young man had been killed during the first months of the war. He also got her a job in the hospital, which pays just enough, if Jack is reading between the lines correctly, so she doesn’t have to feel like she’s living off charity. It doesn’t take much reading between the lines for Jack to infer that she’s mostly a pariah among her neighbors; there’s a reason Nancy hid her relationship to Jamie for so long. There are even, it seems, rumors about her and Constantine, which seems to surprise Nancy far more than it surprises Jack. The point, he supposes, is that she doesn’t have a reputation for him to ruin, which is why she doesn’t mind the scandal if anyone notices a strange man living in her flat. Since Jack’s planning on laying low, it shouldn’t be a problem anyway. 

But when they arrive at Nancy’s, Jack realizes that staying here is going to be more of a problem than he’s anticipated. Nancy is quiet when she comes in, but not quiet enough. 

“Mummy!” says the little boy who has run into the room, and suddenly Jack can’t breathe. It would be easier, he thinks, if the child — Jamie, he corrects himself — were still wearing the mask. That would be infinitely less frightening, less painful than seeing this thin blond boy alive and whole, catapulting himself into his mother’s arms. Nancy kisses him, and Jack turns away. 

When he controls himself, she’s watching him again. “Jamie,” she says, “it’s still bedtime. Go to sleep while I help Captain Harkness settle in.” The boy looks at him, apparently awed by the title, and it takes every bit of mental control Jack has ever learned to flash him a quick smile. 

After Jamie leaves, Nancy asks him, “The Doctor and Rose — are they alright?” 

Jack thinks of the Doctor, cradling the Master’s body in his arms, of Rose holding a gun. “Yes,” he says, and he’s relieved when she accepts it. 

“But you’re not,” she says. 

He doesn’t answer. 

\--------  
They make a good team. Nancy learns quickly, and defers to Jack’s experience without losing her own natural authority. Even with the tech, there are tactical decisions to make and close calls to dodge, and Nancy’s a good strategist who can keep cool under pressure. If he had met her the first time he had lived through the 40s, he would have been trying to recruit her. Jack is fervently glad that he didn’t meet her the first time he lived through the 40s. 

Their rapport is easy, but not intimate. They enjoy each other’s company, but Nancy knows better than to push, and if she notices that he never comes with her to actually dispense the food to the children, she doesn’t say. She also doesn’t comment on Jack’s awkwardness around Jamie, which goes unnoticed by the adoring child but must be obvious to her. 

In return, Jack tries not to notice when a sarcastic comment reminds him of Owen, when her stolid practicality becomes Gwen’s, when she masters a new machine and he sees Tosh. 

And if, when he looks at Jamie, he can never not seen Steven, then that is his penance, and he accepts it. 

\--------  
It takes a few months for Nancy to make up her mind to kiss him. He is hurting, she can see that, and she knows better than to think that she can heal even a fraction of whatever it is he’s suffered. But she’s been lonely, too, and he’s a handsome man and, she knows by now, a good one. 

In the end, it isn’t making up her mind so much as finding the right moment. It’s during one of their closest calls, when an abandoned house turns out not to be and the escape involves a broom cupboard, a jammed police signal, a rat (who they’ve coaxed out of hiding with a high frequency sound wave) and an upstairs window. As much as Nancy really is doing this for the children, she can’t help but feel exhilarated by the rush of adrenaline as they run off, hand in hand, and so when they finally pause, slightly breathless, in an alley, she lifts her face to his and kisses him. 

For a moment, he kisses back, and it is as passionate and intense as she had expected a kiss with Jack to be, but then he pulls back. 

“I’m sorry,” he says. “It’s just — I can’t.” 

She is mortified, at first, before remembering that there is more at stake here than her wounded pride. 

“Who did you lose?” she asks quietly. 

He doesn't answer at first, but a change in his expression tells Nancy he's heard the question. 

“What was her name?” she asks this time. “The woman you lost.” 

He looks at her consideringly, and answers, finally, “Ianto. 

Nancy can’t help the blush. There are things more scandalous than being a single mother, and this is one of them. But this is Jack, and she’s known for months that there is so much more to the world than what she’s seen of it. 

“I’m sorry,” she says, and takes his hand. 

\--------  
It takes six months for it to fall apart. Jack has become too used to the routine by now, has become too comfortable. It is the only explanation for how he could have forgotten what he’s done for even long enough to say the five words that tell him he has to leave. 

They are planning their most ambitious mission yet. As word has gotten out about Nancy, more and more kids have been showing up at mealtimes — or so Nancy tells him, since Jack has still never come with her. Rich houses aren’t rich enough to feed them all, and so Jack and Nancy have set their sights on a food packaging plant. It’s well guarded, but that, of course, is only by twentieth century standards. So it is ironic, bitterly ironic, that they should be stopped by, of all things, a chain on a storeroom door. Sonic technology wasn’t made to deal with metals that had become obsolete long before it was invented, and it turns out that this alloy of steel is resistant to their tools. Nancy is disappointed, but Jack can see a way. They’ve managed to at least force the door slightly ajar, and while the two of them are far too large to get in, they have other assets. 

“We could send Jamie through,” he says. 

Nancy opens her mouth to reply, but the implications of what he’s said have already hit Jack. “No,” he whispers. “Gods no.” 

He runs, barely sparing a glance to make sure that Nancy is safe behind him. 

\--------  
Jack’s been at the flat for a couple of minutes by the time Nancy gets home. He already has a bag out, throwing in some toiletries and the few pieces of clothing he’s acquired over the past six months. Nancy isn’t sure what is going on, but she knows she has to tread carefully. 

“Jack,” she begins. “What are you doing?” Not that she can’t see perfectly well what he’s doing, but she wants to hear his explanation. 

“Leaving,” is his brusque reply. She’ll have to be more direct. 

“Why?” 

“It’s not safe. _I'm_ not safe. 

“You’ve lived here for months. I’d probably be in prison without you.” 

>“And then I asked you to use your son. And you know what the worst part of it is? I’m pretty sure you were going to say yes." 

Nancy has nothing to say to that. The truth is, she _was_ going to say yes, and she senses that telling Jack that it was because she trusts him is exactly the wrong thing to say. She’s so used to his hesitancy around Jamie that she barely notices it anymore, but she has always known, on some level, that it wasn’t only a lover that he lost. When he continues, however, he isn’t talking about whatever happened that left him so broken. 

“Do you know why the world almost ended in a plague of gas-mask zombies? Because I screwed up. I didn’t mean to, but I screwed up and I did something stupid and everyone almost died. At least that time, it was only almost. I hurt everyone I touch, and I’m not doing it to you.” 

His role in the plague isn’t news to her, at least in a general sense, and he knows it, but they’ve never discussed it before. And now, Nancy has an answer. 

“Five years ago,” she begins, “I made a mistake.” He’s about to interrupt, but she cuts him off. “I know,” she says. “It wasn’t anything like yours. It couldn’t have been, because I’m not important. Not like you. My mistakes don’t matter.” 

“You are important,” he starts to say, but she stops him with a look. 

“For someone like me, though, it was about the biggest mistake you could make. And I thought after that everything would be spoiled, that I was spoiled. But then I realized that the only thing that had really changed was that I had Jamie, and that that was a gift. It doesn’t mean it wasn’t a mistake, but if something so good could come out of something like that, I knew I had to forgive myself.” 

She pauses; this is the part that he has to understand. “But then, I didn’t just almost lose Jamie. I lost him, and even though it was the Germans who did it, the guilt came back. And then, I don’t know what you did or how stupid you were, but you made something happen, something that could have been terrible but in the end, everything went back to how it was before. Except for one thing. I had Jamie back, and it was more than a gift, it was a miracle. And it doesn’t mean it was right, what you did, but in the end, it was good.” 

“Sometimes,” Jack says, his voice breaking, “it doesn’t work like that.” 

“I know that,” says Nancy. “But the point is, sometimes it does. So we have to keep trying. For the days like that. When everybody lives.” 

“Nancy, I’m sorry.” He’s about to push a button on his wrist strap, the one he’s told her that he can’t fully control, that takes him to strange places. She’s desperate, and so she says the thing she’s sworn she would never tell him. 

“I love you.” 

For the first time, she sees pity in his eyes. “So did they." He presses the button, and disappears. 

\--------  
Jack doesn’t know where he’s going and doesn’t care. The Doctor has, without knowing it, given him a valuable lesson, has shown him how weak he is and how vigilant he needs to be. He wonders if he’ll ever find out what came of his latest interference in Jack’s life. 

Only, he now realizes, the interference isn’t over. Jack hadn’t even tried typing in coordinates, but he knows that he can’t be here by chance. Even he doesn’t think the universe is that cruel 

He’s still in London. But this time, there’s construction on Big Ben. Construction to repair the hole in its face. It’s the twenty-first century, about 2007. Somewhere in Cardiff, his team is together. They haven’t opened the rift yet; he hasn’t left them. He hasn’t lost them. And somewhere right in this city are Alice Carter and her eight year old son, who will never know that “Uncle Jack” is his grandfather. Who doesn’t know, during those rare visits, that he is worshiping the man that will kill him. 

Why did the Doctor take him here? He may not have understood 1941, but this is just cruelty. He turns wildly, trying to get his bearings, for some clue as to why he’s been sent here, when, just like last time, he hears a voice. 

“Jack.” 

He turns. It is a man this time, a man of maybe sixty-five or seventy. Jack is quite certain he — or at least the Jack Harkness who belongs in this year, as much as he ever belongs anywhere — has never seen him before. 

“Look at me,” the man says. “Really look.” 

Jack does. Still, he almost misses it. But Jack has a lot of practice seeing people age, has learned to see the child as the father of the man. 

“Jamie?” he says. 

The man smiles. “Hello, Dad.” 

\--------  
Jack’s first thought should be about paradoxes. It has been drummed into him since before his agency days. Even with a timeline as complicated as his, he’s worked to prevent these kinds of meetings. But he can’t even think of paradoxes yet, because first he has to deal with the impossibility that there could ever be a future where any child, where this child, calls him father. 

Jamie doesn’t seem bothered by Jack’s silence. Instead, he says, “I can’t say much, and I know where the line is. I have it on good authority,” he adds, smiling. “Besides,” he continues, “you won't be here for long." 

Jack has a question. Just one. “Did I ever tell your mother the truth about” — he still can’t say it — “about what I did?” 

“Yes,” Jamie says. “Eventually.” 

That’s all he needs to hear. Except… 

“So how do I get back?” 

“I think,” Jamie says, “that that’s already been taken care of.” Jack moves to go, but Jamie stops him. “And Dad? It works fine now. You can program it to go wherever you want. Just trust me on that.” 

“Thank you,” says Jack, and vanishes. 

\--------  
When Jack returns to the flat, Jamie is sitting on Nancy’s lap, crying. He stops abruptly when Jack walks in. He leans down to give Nancy a chaste kiss, promising silently to do it properly once Jamie’s asleep, and picks the child up. Nancy walks to stand next to him. 

“How would you two like to see the stars?” says Jack 

Jamie cheers, but Nancy just smiles. 

“Alright,” she says. “But we’ll have to be back by teatime. There’s children to save.” 

“Yes,” Jack says, “there are.” 

As Jack holds Jamie with one arm and grasps Nancy’s hand with his other, three fingers move as one toward a button, sending the travelers out into the universe. 


End file.
